Greetings to all of my readers, followers, former classmates and friends on this first day of 2014, or as I am branding it "My Year of Application". As I said at the close of my last blog update of 2013, I declared completion with my Certificate in Journalism program through the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the physical certificate is in the process of being delivered to me sometime in the next five-to-ten school business days. Over the past 28 months, I've become formally acquainted with the fundamentals of journalism, did some newswriting and reporting, learned about the current online environment, reviewed ethical considerations, practiced some public relations writing, expanded my photojournalism confidence levels and, lastly, dabbled in opinion writing (to supplement my near lifelong following of these subjects). Throughout that period, I posted some of my coursework submissions here to serve as waypoints to measure my personal progress towards the certificate completion goal.
